Atop Hogback

What does one do with a three-day weekend? How about driving 1800 miles round-trip to take a two-hour 4.5 mile climb? That’s what I did.


I should explain.


Forty years ago I worked as general news reporter for a weekly paper in far western Nebraska, in ranch country, in a part of the state permeated with wild buttes and ravines, sage and sand, tumbleweeds, jackrabbits, rattlesnakes, and pronghorn antelope. And cattle. Lots of cattle at home on the range. On Thursdays (the day after the paper came out) I would go wandering with my dog. To Scotts Bluff, a rugged promontory and national monument that marked the final resting place of Hiram Scott, an early trader and trapper; I climbed that frequently and wandered around it. Also Chimney Rock, perhaps the most well-known landmark on the Oregon Trail; and a ways further to Courthouse Rock, so-named because it reminded emigrants of the courthouse back in St. Louis, where most of them started out from; and Jail Rock, the smaller prominence behind it, so named because every courthouse should have a jail behind it. I climbed them all.


Further south another ridge of buttes loomed, among them Hogback Mountain, the highest prominence in Nebraska. I always meant to climb it, but never got around to it. Eventually I moved back east, and Hogback receded into memory, albeit with a checkbox on my bucket list.


This past weekend, for personal reasons, I needed to get away. I had three days to fill, which I didn’t want to do by hanging around town. So I threw stuff into a bag, grabbed my hiking boots, climbed into our 16-year-old Mazda, and drove 600 miles, to Kearney Nebraska, at the far edge of the great plains. I watched the flat middle of Nebraska roll past, sympathizing with the folks who drive to Colorado and bitch about the boring sameness. Having grown up there, I felt differently; watching the distant water towers pop up like mushrooms reminded me of my childhood, and just felt right.


At Kearney, too tired to keep going, I took a motel room. Next morning I drove the final 300 miles, from farm country to ranch country, where the flat land following the Platte River began to rise, bordered by sandy mounds and a distant rim of sharp buttes and ravines. Towns grew scarce and the radio signals became mostly country-western music and preachers. Except when I stumbled onto the area’s public radio station, which faded in and out. In my haste to depart I had forgotten to bring many CDs, so I spent a lot of time scanning the radio. Fortunately my two CDs were Tom Petty’s greatest hits and George Harrison’s “Let it Roll.” So I had soulmates along.


I checked the map, and, almost to Wyoming, turned north off the interstate, onto a surprisingly well-maintained but almost deserted state highway that shot arrow straight through rolling sandy hills, toward the heart of buttes. I began to wonder what the Hell I was doing, what had caused me to give in to such a sudden impulse, the sort thoughts that arise when one has been driving for what seemed like forever, and heading, in Tom Petty’s words, to “God knows where.” I also began to wonder what would happen if my car conked out; I had my cell-phone but who would I call? AAA might have a connection out there, but it would take hours to get help, and I doubt it would be worth fixing the car. If parts were available. I’d probably have to simply abandon the car, sell it for whatever salvage value it might have in this buyers’ market, and rent or buy a car to get home.


The weather, too, was questionable, seasonably cool but gray and threatening showers. I’d somehow forgotten about the wind that blows constantly out there. Fortunately I’d brought a windbreaker and sweatshirt, so I’d be okay as long as the rain held off. Again the question, what was I doing?


I decided to honor my impulse and whatever inner voice had invited me to do this; not the least of which had been the simple question of, at 69 years old, how many chances, how much time, would I have to do this? And I felt a surge of strength, meaning, and calm. I’d follow this road to where I was meant to go.


Eventually I hit the turnoff for County Road 40, which I knew led to the base of Hogback. The road was not all that inviting, a narrow graveled stretch with a “Dead End” sign at the start, and I rumbled across a cattle guard a ways down the road, which. I followed until it ended, at a house beside a corral. A stocky,wind-wizened guy was standing in the yard. I knew it was “Arch,” the man who rented the house (I’d done some research on Peakbagger, a site that catalogs the highest peaks in each state and discusses them). I told Arch what I wanted and asked if that was Hogback. He said it was. I asked if he had any problems with me leaving my car there and climbing it, He said no, just open yonder gate, which went through a barbed wire fence, and to follow the vague trails through the pastures and down and across the draws, and gradually up the “mountain.” He said I wasn’t the first to come along, and he didn’t care if I went up there. “Of course,” he added, “once you go through that gate you’re on someone else’s land.”


“Does he care if I’m on his land?”


“Doubt it. I trespass there all the time.”


“What about cattle?” I asked, careful not to make the greenhorn mistake of calling them “cows,”


“You probably won’t see any. If you do, don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.”


So off I went, following the slightly muddy ruts through the grass and spiky yucca and prickly pear cactus, past frequent fairly fresh reminders that cattle had been there in the not too distant past. In the distance I saw the cliff faces of more buttes, but in front of me the pasture simply rose gradually toward the edge of Hogback, whose top kept receding into the distance. The trail led steeply down into wooded draws and up again, sometimes almost slick with mud.


The landscape, especially the draws, was dotted with thick patches of cedars, which the wind pushed through with a sort of soft moan. I’d previously used the word “soughed” to describe wind in the trees, but realized I’d never really heard it before. Almost spooky, lonely, as though the landscape were breathing, and I was an intruder. In other words, just the perfect word. The wind soughed in the trees.


I knew that distances deceived the eye out here, and that nothing was as close as it seemed. Every prominence I climbed revealed a higher one behind it, and things got steep, the ground littered with, sometimes slippery with, pieces of limestone that had weathered out of the buttes. More than once I sort of leaned backward without meaning to, and almost lost my balance. I realized that I was alone out here, and that Arch would not likely worry about me till maybe the next morning, after I had perhaps been nibbled to death by coyotes or badgers. I had my cell phone but reception was poor. I thought of the old movie “Little Big Man,” in which the title character, as an old man, lay down in spot much like this, closed his eyes, and said, “it is a good day to die.” But in the movie it began to rain lightly, and the old man got up.


So did this old man.


Fortunately for me, the rain held off and the peak was drawing near. The climb got steeper, occasionally up limestone cliffs and again I nearly fell backward. I wondered again what I was doing but decided I had come this far and may never come again. So ever onward. I saw a pair of antelope bound upward in the not so far distance, while crows circled and argued below.


Finally I had nowhere higher to go, and found myself on wide, flat, edifice. The landscape fell away on all sides, and I could see in all directions. I’d half-expected to experience a sense of disappointment, a sort of “is this all there is?” But instead I felt a calm sense of accomplishment. I’d done what I’d set out to do. I picked up a souvenier rock, and stuck it in my pocket. All that remained was going back down without falling or getting lost.


Since I’m now home and writing this, it should be obvious I neither fell nor got seriously lost, though at times both seemed reasonable possibilities. When I reached the bottom, careful to close the gate behind, Arch was nowhere to be seen. I pondered going to his door, but I doubted he cared much. And I wondered if some sort of guard dog lay in wait somewhere in the debris and detritus that fronted his house. So I took a few last photos and headed back out, back to my day to day life, with one more item checked off the bucket list. Nine-hundred more miles of driving with truck stop coffee and fast food.


And, without a doubt, I can say it was all worth doing.